Creative Writing: A Day On The Mississippi

A Day on the Mississippi The weather was perfect. Mid 80’s with not a cloud in the sky, perfect boating weather. Gingerly, I set my first foot on the dock, it swayed beneath me as the dock descending a few inches in the water. I pushed forward, walking fast but being sure-footed to eliminate the chance of falling in the river. Slowly, but surely, I reached our boat. It was tied up in the middle slip of the dock. My father and I began to quickly take the tarp off the boat, snap by snap. We both worked quickly, snapping each one off fast as possible knowing the faster we got it off, the sooner we could be relaxing on the shore. The final click sounded and the tarp went limp. We then removed the blue tarp to reveal the beautiful, pearl white …show more content…
We were darting down the main channel of the Mississippi maxing out the RPM’s on the boat. My dad was driving while I sat up front, looking out for the occasional debris floating around. If there were to be something in the path of the boat, I was to alert him. You could never know what you would see. Animals, sticks or even full trees! It was essential for me to yell, “log” if there were a stick ahead otherwise we would destroy the boat. I knew by habit where we were going. The boat was northbound towards Cordova. We knew it was a long hour trek to our secret spot but it was well worth it. We went past many towns and places. We started in LeClaire. After LeClaire, we headed north past Princeton. You always know when you are passing Princeton because of the dense boat traffic. Princeton has a beach that is a local boating hot spot due to its large beach and the calmer waters. After we passed Princeton Beach, we knew were we close. We had about 20 minutes left to get to our spot, the sand …show more content…
The sand pits are a large horseshoe of sandy beaches and a calm lagoon off to the side of the main river. We choked the motor down to really soak in the settings. The hot, mid-day sun beat down on the water, causing it to glisten. There weren’t too many people here so the spot was silent, you could only hear the water lapping against the beach with the occasional slap of a bass shooting out of the water like a bullet, then slapping the water against its scales. We eased the boat onto an open spot on the beach and we hopped out of the back, me doing a dive and my dad doing a cannonball. My dad and I were sweating at this point so jumping into the water felt amazing. The water temperature was just right. It was just what we needed to refresh us. We floated in the water without a care in the world. We had no sense of time, we just agreed that once the sun began to set it was time to